First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who downloaded a free ecopy of The Tenth Life of Mr. Whiskers this weekend. Ninety-three downloads put Mr. Whiskers in the number one position for free Teen Short Stories. Whoo hoo!! If you missed out, don’t worry. It’s only $0.99 at Amazon.

So, as I mentioned previously, my good friend, Kody, agreed to give up soda if I wrote an adult story. And believe me, he let me know almost every day for the first week what a major sacrifice he was making to encourage me. I don’t take the threat of whoring oneself out for a Mountain Dew lightly, so I wrote my story. Okay, it was a short story, but I wrote it. Yay me! It’s a thriller with killers and body parts and stuff. A bit of a change from the young adult genre I’m used to, comfortable with. But the concept was great, the ending superb. I knew he was going to love it. So I sent it to him for his feedback. You have no idea how nervous I was while waiting to hear back from him.

You know what he said?

It was okay.

I still have a bruise on my forehead from where it hit my desk in utter defeat. My voice wasn’t much different from my YA writing, he figured out the ending right away, and my POV switch was too jarring. Ugh! But you know what? That’s perfectly acceptable because at least I took a chance and dared to jump out of my comfort zone and do something different. So what if I made a ton of mistakes writing my first thriller. I’ll keep writing and researching and learn how to write a thrilling story. I’m not giving up. What I’ll do with it once it’s done, I have no idea. But that’s not the point. The point is I’m doing something different. And different is good.